Dee-Rob

Between the work retreat in Napa and this weekend, I’ve been spending too much time staring at imaginary cracks in strange ceilings. We spent the weekend in the big city of San Francisco on ocassion of their marathon. I hung around in boutique hotel chi-chi-ness whilst M. ran until his natural resources were depleted and stopped at 26.2 miles.

What I know is, I don’t sleep so good on strange bedding and surroundings. I imagine my slutty years were all about insomnia really. I mean if you’re out partying and you crash somewhere, if you know you won’t sleep, you have to occupy your time somehows.

Now, without the excess boozing and the sedate lifestyle, I’m left to lying awake and feeling miserably tired. On the plus side, the early morning self-recriminations are nowhere to be found.

If whining about sleeplessness isn’t enough, in addition to luxury hotels I’m done with cuisine. For about 7 solid days, I’ve dined out on finely prepared, sumptuous food, and I’m bloated and overstuffed. Bologna on whitebread is the level of richness I could currently stand.

To summarize, I think I’ve just mind-melded with the emotional depth that is Paris Hilton.

I’m back at work, back at home, back in the U.S. and just plain old back. It’s nice to be back, and I’m hoping after about seven days of sleeping normally, I might even feel back to my old self again.

Meanwhile, I’ve started going through a half a million pictures of Uganda. I took tons. Some of the cream of animal depictions can be found here:

Animals in Uganda.

There will be many more to come, along with a lot of verbiage I suppose. For the short term, though, I plan to try to shake what is probably an ordinary head cold, but I imagine to be a rare tropical illness.

It took a whole lot of plane time, but we made it to Kampala, Uganda. Unfortunately, my very impressions from the airport to the hotel were dimmed by the darkness of night and the fact that I wasn’t able to sleep on the plane.

From San Francisco to Washington, DC, we logged six hours on Friday in the air. On Saturday, starting in the evening, it was first 8 hours from Washington, DC to Amsterdam, and then somewhere in the fuzzy Sunday morning another 8 from Amsterdam to Kampala. I just flew in from the U.S. and boy are my arms, and every other part of me, tired.

Finally, after all of that flying there was another 45 minutes or an hour to get to the hotel by bus.

All of the flying happened after a four- or so hour meeting where I got to meet my fellow travelers and hear about some of Uganda’s history and issues. It was a long weekend, but not in the usual, restful sense.

Today, Monday, we started early with breakfast, Uganda’s first woman veterinarian, followed by a few hours at our nation’s embassy and an afternoon with agricultural researchers. I wish I had slept last night to be better able to process the information. Perhaps tonight exhaustion will will out over my lifelong neurotic tendency to lie awake in strange beds. I envy folks wh0 can fall asleep anywhere and on a dime.

As for my first photos and first thoughts, they’ll have to wait until a good night’s rest and the ability to think clearly. I’m afraid tomorrow morning’s 7:30 a.m. start for an outing at Lake Victoria doesn’t bode well for my sleep fantasy.

I’m not sure if I can snap out of this great fatigue. Nope, instead I might perish on the spot with only a note to blow my ashes over Monterey.

My luggage finally fucking arrived at about 9 p.m. last night, while we were out dining with the family of Aunt #6. (I am determined to learn names this year, since I think I have the numerical order of the family down.)

It sucks wearing your boyfriend’s close (and mind you a wee tighter than I enjoy), whilst strolling the major shopping neighborhood in a major, fashionable, modern, consumerist city such as Singapore. We did buy an unlocked cell phone and SIM card to maintain radio contact with the relatives. But, I felt too disgusting, tired, frustrated and harassed by the equally jet lagged (but less like to admit it) boyo.

By the early evening, I just wanted to crawl my poorly clothed self into bed and sulk.

Although, dinner at an Indonesian restaurant was great with the Singaporean branch of the family, and they seemed to forgive my complete lack of fashion. I do so hate being the pseudo-wife dressed as a pseudo dyke.

It’s tomorrow, Monday, on this side of the world. Alas, the score for the Super Bowl didn’t time travel with us. Go Pats.

We’re in Singapore. I’m tired. Can’t find easy web access.

And so it goes.

Hopefully a better night’s sleep than our last night’s dragging in after 1 a.m. after cumulatively flying over 18 hours is on the agenda.

Asia is very far away from the U.S.  About 9 hours in we still haven’t hit our layover in Japan.  Japan promises fun things like some kind of foot, toilets that are not in mid-air and electricity. From Tokyo, we’ll hit Singapore at about 12 midnight, there anyway.

It will be 19 or so hours from when we left the house, and one crossover the international dateline and yesterday is completely gone.  I’m sure I could come with some yearbook or poster worthy wise about minding the days as they slip through your hands. I hope I get to see monkeys.

More so, I hope I get to see monkeys in a wilderness kind of way.  Ones that don’t get peanuts from children, but instead live by their wits, as I’ll be doing. OK, that’s a lie.  I’ll be living more by my half-wits.  The wit that will need to go along with the crowd and smile profusely like the dim watt that I am unsure about language and all that.  Thank fucking god English is pretty prevalent among the M.’s folks.

If we get a SIM card to work in my old, unlocked cell phone I schlepped along, I’m going to have to beg M. to carry it.  His family from what I have seen seems addicted to the technology, using phones to text and talk like walkie talkies.  You don’t just meet somewhere, someone will call you. As what I like to call the “pseudo-wife,” seemingly there is a movement to put me pseudo in charge. So his aunt has my number on speed dial. It gives me sympathy to my sisters-in-law.  Seriously, what cosmic decree that apparently crosses cultures, puts the chicks in charge of telecommunications.  If I wanted that kind of role I would have tried to be a radioman in the army. 

There’s a whole lot of shit I haven’t written out and tried to make all funny haha.  But rest assured there are teeny little glimmers of ideas bouncing in the vast, empty expanse I call my skull.

The best I can do:

 - M. has taken to getting T-shirts altered to his particular likes. 
 - M. makes me laugh.  Very, very much, in fact too much, like myself he struggles with his individuality.  We both think we blend in a very low-key one of the crowd way.  We don’t.
 - It looks like folks from a few jobs ago, and number 2 entry in my spectacularly fired from workplaces trilogy, might show up at the show I’m hosting.
 - Oh yeah, did I mention I’m hosting a show.  Comedy.  Funny.  Come on by.
 - Next week we head to Singapore and Malaysia.  I’m beginning the obsessive compulsive phase of traveling.  It begins with list making in my head.  I also am quite concerned that my underwear is ready for the international challenge.
 - Apropos the item above, my guilt is sinking in.  I mentioned a desire to see the rain forest.  I believe this wish will be met, but that accompanying us will be a subset of M.’s clan.  I had no intention that my whimsy would result in forcing his mother to a long march in the jungle.
 - Since Chinese is way above my intellectual capacity to learn, I thought I’d try Malay.  I have one week to actually take the book off our book shelf and learn a language.  Good planning.
 - Our guide book to Singapore says the slang for white person is “Ang Moh” around that neighborhood.  I think it’s Hokkien.  I asked M. for the word for “fat,” and it sounds something like bu-yo.  I’m going to be listening up for “bu-yo ang moh,” because this visit I’m chubbier and whiter than before.
 - If I hear a universal “Holy Shit” when I get off the plane, I know the prior item is correct.
 - Finally, there’s a whole slew of shit about work I could bitch about.  Suffice it to say — People is C-R-A-Z-Y (and generally, they annoy me.  People, all of them, that is.)